Lt220
Bronze Member
My latest tractor implement project.....a 3 point hitch grapple. I tossed up the idea about this for a while. On my days off from the fire hall, I help my Father-in-law cut trees. While he is in the bucket truck doing the trimming, I'm on the ground doing the dragging! I wanted to build something that I could drag brush to the chipper pile and also skid small logs. I came up with a forked bucket that hooks up to my JD quick hitch with a hydraulic grapple mounted to the bucket. The grapple is removable so I can use the forked bucket for other tasks as well. The pictures don't show it but I did go back and reinforce all the joints on the grapple arm with welded metal gussets to help secure the joints due to the hydraulic pressure. I also made welded fixed pins for the 3 point arms and top link because I wanted it to fit my quick hitch. The bucket works very well with my hydraulic top link also. This allows me to tip the bucket up or down. The cost for all metal, hardware, cylinder, hoses and paint was somewhere around $400.00.
